After Love III

My heart.

My dear heart.

If only I could love you so well as I love all the other

Dear hearts.

After Love II

Avoid the void;

Were I to approach it all again,

I would approach with no missing parts,

With no empty vacuum in my soul.

In this half-light, I would never feel your absence slip by like seconds unwatched.

The loneliest woman in Jerusalem

Ever the muse and never the wife

Makes a maid timid and ‘fraid for her life.

Erev RC Tammuz

In a sleep without dreams

The whores and the cats of Jerusalem

Recollect themselves.

Intrigue

Here lieth a man with no redeeming qualities;

Not even an eyeglass.

Shallot

You are a painting of a little white girl

With flowing red hair.

There are unbudded roses tucked into your curls.

Dream of sleep, because this is the only chance to be young.

Your fragility disturbs the stars

And turns the trees to stone.

All the night is whispers-

A big, black orchestra.

Blessings and Curses

It took nine matches to erase your name from the Book of Life.

Tomorrow it will take eight.

The new month hovers, full of possibilities.

I watch your name, aflame.

I burn my own words-

I wash my hands of you.

I fell

I fell into a trap;

The same trap.

Twice, once again, again, again.

It never gets easier.

The more you tell me you love me,

The less I believe you

The less I believe myself.

Moon

The full moon reigns supreme in Jerusalem,

Aglow with sadness and surprise.

It is always worried to find you

In the same place, time

And time again.

Men

Men

You should know

Somewhere out there,

There is a girl

Trying to get the smell of you

Off her sheets.

It may be

Twenty years since you last saw her

Curls tumble on your shoulder

But you should know

Women never forget.

They take you to their graves.

The smell of you;

The sadness and cigarettes.

They throw out pillows and duvets

But the smell remains.

In every street in Jerusalem

A whore is trying to get that smell off her sheets

Trying to dislodge the image from her memory.

She has not let learnt

The lesson of impossibility.

Sex without love, in any other city, is a grave burden.

In Jerusalem, it is a death sentence.